


I slept in the darkness, it was lonely

by a_hand_outstretched



Series: Crack-Up [2]
Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: (sorry shiv), Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Phone Sex, Sibling Incest, Slut Shaming, depression spiral shiv, general shame permeating this (for obvious reasons?), oblique references to self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:27:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29480673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_hand_outstretched/pseuds/a_hand_outstretched
Summary: “Shiv. Is everything okay?” he asks.Shiv answers quickly, tripping over her words in a way she’s usually careful to avoid. “No, yes, it’s fine. Everything’s fine. I don’t even know why I — I just wanted to talk. I guess.”
Relationships: Kendall Roy/Siobhan "Shiv" Roy
Series: Crack-Up [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165385
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	I slept in the darkness, it was lonely

_I dreamt of storms, I dreamt of sound  
_ _I dreamt of gravity, keeping us around_

His heart is already racing when he wakes up to the shrill ring of his phone. He tries to shake off the nightmare he was in as he gropes around for it on the nightstand. He’s momentarily blinded by the brightness of the screen. He blinks a few times, tries to make out the name. Siobhan. A panic hits him that he doesn’t understand. Maybe it’s just residual emotions from the dream, but he’s afraid to answer. It’s just Shiv. It’s just his sister, and it’s not even that late. He forces himself to touch the screen. 

“Shiv. Is everything okay?” he asks. 

Shiv answers quickly, tripping over her words in a way she’s usually careful to avoid. “No, yes, it’s fine. Everything’s fine. I don’t even know why I — I just wanted to talk. I guess.” He doesn’t know what to do with this version of her, insecure and apologetic. It doesn’t fit. He feels no calmer than he did before he accepted the call. “Is that okay? Sorry, we don’t need to do this now.” 

What, like he’d hang up on her? He swings his legs off the bed and reaches for the light. “Uh, no, no, it’s fine, Shiv, what’s up?” He’s fully awake now and his mouth feels dry. He figures he’ll have a drink. He walks to the kitchen. Shiv doesn’t answer until he reaches the fridge. 

“Do you remember what you said to me, at Mom’s?” she asks. Her voice sounds far away. He wonders where she is, if she’s at home. Tom must be asleep. She must be sitting alone, on the balcony or holed up in the bathroom. He thinks about the way she acted on Christmas. She’d been smaller, somehow, like she was shrinking into herself. When she crawled into his arms she’d felt hollow. It worried him then, and now he regrets not checking in on her in the weeks that have passed since. But checking in is not something they do, as a rule. Plus, she has people, he’d told himself, has _Tom_ , who must be good for outsourcing emotional labor, if nothing else. 

As for what he said… They’d been drunk. Nostalgic. Coincidentally sitting half on top of each other. They were just words, but he meant them. 

He grips a hand around the handle to the fridge. He catches a glimpse of the scar on his wrist. A purple gash even after all this time. “Yeah, of course I do.” 

“Is it okay if I... ask you for something now?” 

He thinks about what she might ask him to do. A small part of him whispers that there might be nothing she can ask of him that he would say no to. He answers before that voice can grow any louder. “Yeah,” he says. He pulls out a beer. 

“Could you… tell me I’m worthless?” 

He sucks in a breath before he can catch himself. “Siobhan…” 

“Just tell me I fucked everything up,” she says, less a request than a demand, now, anger flaring in her voice and then morphing into something panicked and pleading as the words continue to rush out of her, “I know I did, I know… with Dad, the hearings… with fucking — I made all the wrong choices, okay? I just need to hear it from someone else. Please. Just a fucking sliver of honesty, for once. That’s all.” 

He takes a long drink. Shiv really is a mess. He remembers being desperate for this, wanting the world to match the revulsion he felt for himself. For anyone and anything to give him the relief of disgust. He wants to beg her to snap out of it, but he knows she’d only hang up and find another way to hurt herself. They are all endlessly resourceful when it comes to self-destruction. 

“Okay,” he says, finally. His voice goes lower, flattens out. “You already know you didn’t deserve any of it in the first place.” He pauses, thinking over his next words. “You’ve never worked for anything in your fucking life. You’ve… deluded yourself into thinking that people are so dazzled by you they’ll overlook the fact that you don’t have anything to offer besides your name. But that’s not even your fault, because you were more spoiled than any of us, weren’t you?” 

“Yeah,” she says, the hysteria gone from her voice. He leans over the counter top, almost close enough to rest his forehead against the cool marble. 

“You were always daddy’s little princess, and you still play that shit up whenever it will get you something. You act like — like it’s all _owed_. And it works. You think everything’s a game, but you’re not even good at playing it, because you never really had to learn, and that’s why you married a fucking limpdick brownnoser who doesn’t care if you fuck a different man every night of the week.” He takes a beat to catch his breath. “Are you listening to me?” 

“Uh huh,” she says. 

“And now, what, you’re just _sad_?” he spits the word at her, finding he believes what he’s saying more than he expected to. “It’s pathetic. I have to deal with all this shit, you have no fucking idea — and you can’t do a single thing on your own? Isn’t there some senator’s cock you could suck who’d give you a job?” 

Shiv makes a noise that jolts through him. It’s unmistakable. He freezes, waits until the silence between them becomes too much to bear. “Are you getting off on this?” he asks, his voice pitched as mean as he can make it. 

“Yeah,” she whispers. Fuck, he’s half hard just from that. Oh, fuck. His mouth is too dry. He takes another drink of his beer and tries not to picture her. She must be home alone after all, if she’s doing this, if _they’re_ doing this. She called him knowing this would happen. Even now, she’s just using him to get what she wants. 

“You’re fucking disgusting.” 

“I know,” she says, still barely audible, half a whine. “Please.” 

Kendall’s throat feels like it's closed up. He coughs. “You need me to do this for you, too, huh? You’re so fucked up you need your brother to, what? Degrade you while you play with your cunt?” 

“I tried —”

“You tried what?” 

“I brought someone home tonight, some nobody. And he did everything I wanted, Kendall. But it was terrible. It was like — like I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t get off. I kicked him out. And I lied here alone and —” her voice cracks, “and, I don’t know, I thought about you and what you said and I’m so fucking wet right now, Kendall. What the fuck is wrong with me?” 

“I should hang up and leave you like this. You know that? That’s what you deserve. You’re fucking pathetic.” These are just words, some panicked part of him repeats, just words, and words are nothing, right? “You’re acting like some worthless slut, looking for a cock thick enough to fix your fucked up head — but you won’t, Shiv." But if ever words could be damning, irredeemable, intrinsically wrong: "Because none of them are me.” 

Muffled noises come from her end of the line, like she’s covering the phone, or maybe she dropped it. 

“Oh… fuck,” he says, dragging out the word and popping the k at the end. Fuck, fuck, fuck. His knuckles are white where he’s gripping the edge of the counter. 

“Ken—” Her voice cuts off, but he can hear her shaky breathing. 

“Shiv — I —” He knows it’s pointless but he can’t stop himself from asking anyway. “Are you going to be okay, Shiv?”

“Um. Thank you.” 

The line goes dead. He stares numbly at the blank screen in his hand for a long time. He opens the freezer and removes a bottle of vodka. He gulps directly from the bottle until the room starts to spin around him. He has the vague idea to pass out right there, before he can think any more about the things he just said, but he stays upright. He ends up making his way back to his bedroom, trailing a hand along the wall as he goes. He collapses on the bed and hopes the darkness will help clear his mind, but it doesn’t. Shiv’s all he can see. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title/lyrics from Odd Future.


End file.
